"120 Things ABC CBS CNN FOX and NBC Won't Tell You" Cont..
12.
Paul did not invent Christianity.
Ankerberg: Alright, now fit that into the context of 1 Corinthians 15. Take us through what Paul is saying in terms of transmitting this oratative message that was held by the Christians. Now we’re talking about the early apostles, going right back to Jesus. Weave that all together.
Witherington: Let’s set the setting just for a second. Paul’s writing to a largely Gentile group of Christians, in a bustling metropolis called Corinth.
Ankerberg: About what time?
Witherington: Somewhere in the mid-50’s A.D. Within 20 or 25 years of Jesus’ death. Now he’s writing to an audience of people, a congregation, that was highly pneumatic. They had what we would call charismatic gifts. They spoke in tongues, they prophesied. The spiritual gifts were really high on their wish list of things they wanted to have and do in their worship service. And traditionally speaking, whenever you’ve got a sort of charismatic approach to Christianity, traditions play less importance. There’s not a lot of focus on being well-grounded in the past. You’re looking forward to the experience of the moment or the future things that God’s going to prophesy and that sort of thing.
Now what Paul tries to do in 1 Corinthians is ground those pneumatic Corinthians Christians in the sacred traditions that Christians elsewhere believed. And he wanted them to be a form of Christianity that comported with the other forms that were out there. So, among other things that he does, is he deliberately cites some of the specific sayings of Jesus, for example Jesus’ teaching about no divorce (1 Cor. 7). In 1 Corinthians 11 he says "I’m passing on to you what I have received, that on the night that Jesus was betrayed He took bread, broke it, and said, take, eat, this is my body¼." And in 1 Corinthians 15 of course he says the same thing, "I have passed on to you already that which I myself received." Now this is technical early Jewish language for the receiving of the Sacred Tradition that needs to be preserved and passed on intact. It’s so important it needs to be memorized, and memorable.
Ankerberg: Not only that, but Paul said he got it from somebody else.
Witherington: Exactly. It comes from the earliest Christians.
Ankerberg: How do we know that he got it from somebody else, or who is it that he got it from?
Witherington: Well, the best perspective on that I would say is that probably his earliest Christian teaching that Paul himself received was in Damascus. We will remember that after his conversion on Damascus Road, or his dramatic close encounter of the first kind, he was taken to Damascus and was with Christians in Damascus, and it surely must have been there that he received his first Christian instruction. Later, of course, he went up to Jerusalem and talked with the pillar apostles as well, but his basic, nodal Christian instruction must have come in Damascus from some of the early Christians there, such as Ananias, who laid hands on him.
Ankerberg: Alright. Take us back to 1 Corinthians 15 and what Paul was saying.
Witherington: Well, the key phrase here is "I passed on to you that which I received." Notice this is technical early Jewish language used by Pharisees, non-Christian Jews as well as Christian Jews. And the language here is the language of the careful transmission of sacred beliefs, sacred traditions. And what he is passing on, he says he himself received. Now what did he himself receive? It was the tradition about the death, the burial, the resurrection and the appearances of the risen Lord. He gives us this long grocery list of appearances, with himself being the last of all. And so you may be sure he’s added something to the list, namely the appearance to him, but otherwise, this was received tradition that was believed, not just by him, but believed by the other early church Christians, and it was transmitted in various congregations. And he’s trying to get that Corinthian congregation to conform to the form of early Christian belief that’s found elsewhere in early Christendom.
Ankerberg: Yes, this is a flag that’s planted in the ground around 55-57 A.D., in essence, which is 25 years after the time Jesus passed off the scene.
Witherington: Right.
Ankerberg: And Paul is saying he got that information, which the community of Christians already holds, and is teaching other places, and the fact is, he got it from someplace else. How early did he get it?
Witherington: Well, again, it seems to me that since everywhere in Paul’s letters the essence of the matter is "Christ, and him crucified," and "the risen Lord," it seems to me only logical to conclude that this was some of the very first teaching he received.
What most scholars would say is that the earliest tradition that probably received a written form, the earliest continuous narrative, was the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus. This was probably the earliest part of the Gospel that was put into written form as a continuous narrative. It’s very possible that at some point Paul had read such a narrative. What we know, though, that he had contact with some of the eyewitnesses that actually experienced these things, and he could consult with them.
13.
Some of the earliest statements of Christian beliefs predate Paul.
Ankerberg: Take me back to some of the creedal statements that precede the writing of the New Testament. That which was being preached that will show up in the book of Acts, and why are some of those important?
Witherington: Well, let’s take probably the earliest confession that Christians’ made: Jesus is the risen Lord. We find this in various places in Paul’s letters. He says, this is what you’ve got to confess with your lips and believe in your heart that Jesus is the risen Lord. Well, that seems to have been the very earliest distinctive Christian confession.
Ankerberg: Why do scholars hold that? I mean, how do you guys figure that out?
Witherington: Well, if you go back to the actual stories of the visit to the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus, what is it that the women go and tell the male disciples? "He is risen! He is risen indeed." I mean, this is actually going back to Easter morning itself. This is the original proclamation. This is the proclamation that Mary Magdalene made to the male disciples, even though, initially, they scoffed at it. And so, we’re talking bedrock here. This was the most primitive confession. It distinguished Jewish Christians from non-Christian Jews.
14.
Paul makes statements in Philippians 2 that clearly indicate he thought Jesus was God.
Ankerberg: What about Philippians 2? The critical scholars accept Philippians as a Pauline epistle. What do they do with Philippians 2?
Witherington: Well, now that’s a really interesting one. Because what we’ve got in Philippians 2 is what I would call a "Christ hymn." If you are a student of Greek you will know that this is in a sort of rhythmic cadence. It’s a sort of poetic form; it has a V pattern. There’s a three-point sermon here about his pre-existence, his earthly existence, and his existence in heaven beyond his time of his earthly career. So it’s a kind of V pattern, he came down, humbled himself to the form of a servant, even to the point of death on the cross. Because of this God has highly exalted him. Now what we know is that when we compare Philippians 2 to John 1, when we compare Philippians 2 to Colossians 1, we’ve got these V pattern hymns about Christ in various different document of the New Testament which suggests to most scholars that this is an early Christological hymn. Predating Paul in terms of his own performance of this particular hymn in Philippians 2, predating the writing of the Gospels. So what we know, and what Martin Hengel and other scholars have stressed, is that these Christological hymns show that a high Christology was a very early Christology.
Ankerberg: What does a "high Christology" mean?
Witherington: Well, it means that it’s a Christology that affirms not only the true humanity of Jesus, but also his divinity.
Ankerberg: Where did that come from, then?
Witherington: Well, it came from the assessment of the impact of the Christ event. You see, what a person is, what a person claims to be, and what others claim about him can all be different things. No Christian scholar that I know of is denying that the early Christians ascribed to Jesus, or said about Jesus, more than Jesus said about himself. The question is, is that "more" grounded in who he actually was, or not? It’s not so crucial whether Jesus actually claimed this or not. The question, was he, indeed, the son of God? Was the one that God sent from heaven to redeem the world or not? The earliest Christians all believed that was certainly the case. And they believed that was grounded in who he actually was. So this confession, this Christ hymn goes back to the earliest Christians and what they believed about Jesus.
Ankerberg: Okay, it goes back to Christ himself. Does it go back in the sense that Jesus himself actually taught it?
Witherington: Well, I think it’s fair to say that the Christ hymn itself goes beyond some of the things that Jesus taught directly. But there are indirect indications in the teaching of Jesus when he says, you know, "I’ve come not to be served, but to serve and give my life a ransom for many," Mark 10:45. Some of the implication of his use of "the son of man" phrase in Mark 14:62, "you’ll see the son of man coming on the clouds." It’s clear that he’s implying that he’s more than a mere mortal or that you should evaluate him in the categories that Daniel 7 evaluates the son of man in. So what is implicit in the teaching of Jesus becomes explicit in the Christological hymns and the teaching of the early church.
15.
Jesus can forgive sins. He proved it.
Ankerberg: Take Mark 2 where you have a day in the life of the Lord Jesus, an early account, and Jesus shows up in front of the religious leaders in Capernaum, or they are there at his meeting, and a man is let down through the roof, a story that I think almost everybody was told in Sunday School. But it has great significance in terms of what happened. Jesus didn’t say to the man first "be healed." What did he say, what was the significance?
Witherington: Well, he said "your sins are forgiven." Now, he doesn’t say, "I forgive your sins," he says "your sins are forgiven." Now at the very least that means that he knows something about that person that only God should know—whether or not he’s been exonerated for the sins that he’s committed. And of course the crowd, or the Jews who were there react negatively "How in the world could he know this?" How could he¼ I mean he’s not been to the temple, he hasn’t offered a sacrifice, he hasn’t heard the pronouncement by the priest, "Your sin’s are absolved." How could Jesus know that? How could Jesus say that? How would he dare say something like that?
Well, at the very least the Markine narrative is saying that Jesus believed that he had the authority to pronounce the forgiveness of sins. What kind of person had that kind of authority?
Ankerberg: Yes, they called that blasphemy.
Witherington: Exactly, which is the bestowing on yourself prerogatives that only God should have.
16.
If the Bible is true, then one day Jesus will judge your life.
Ankerberg: He also in Matthew talked about coming back at the end of the world. What do the scholars make of that passage where he says he’s going to determine the eternal destiny of every man, woman and child that have ever lived?
Witherington: Well, most non-traditional scholars would say, "Well, Jesus never said that. I mean, he did talk about himself having a future beyond death." The odd thing about that, when you make a sort of categorical statement, well, Jesus couldn’t have talked about himself in this way, is that when you actually study what early Jews said about themselves, we know, for example that the Pharisees all believed in the resurrection. That is, they believed they had a destiny beyond death, and that they were going to participate in the coming of what we would call the kingdom on earth, when the lion lies down with the lamb and the Holy Land is back in it’s original Edenic state, and all God’s people are together and happy and there’s a messianic banquet, and that sort of stuff.
Now if early Jews of a non-messianic bent could believe about themselves that they had a future beyond death, and that they had a role in what’s going to happen in the people of God beyond death, why should Jesus not think this? If Jesus was some great prophetic or messianic figure, it seems only logical if he believed in resurrection, that beyond death he would play a significant role in the coming of the kingdom. And so in that regard, it just comports with what we know about early Jewish beliefs in life after death. |
